By the time the last gavel came down early in the morning of November 18, international climate negotiators in Bonn paved the way to the next climate summit in Katowice, Poland in 2018. There, the rules underpinning the Paris Agreement will be finalized and countries can signal their commitments to enhance national climate plans by 2020.

The accumulation of dirt on solar panels has been proven to reduce their efficiency significantly, placing a heavy burden on owners to keep the panels clean in order to ensure project viability. U.K.-based Opus Materials Technologies says it has received funding that will help it validate a new coating that will allow solar panels to clean themselves.

There’s no question that the solar industry has gained the solid standing it now enjoys by employing certain winning technologies, but there also is always room for improvement. We’ve seen a few intriguing innovations in solar crop up that aren’t on the commercial starting line, but that you may want to watch in 2018.

On Tuesday, Industry and Energy Committee MEPs agreed that by 2030, a minimum of 35 percent of all energy consumed in the EU would need to come from renewable, cleaner sources. For the transport sector, at least 12 percent of the energy consumed in each member state would have to be produced from renewables, such as the sun or wind.